• Birmingham hosting European championships

• ‘It would mean almost as much as Olympic title’

Keely Hodgkinson says winning a European gold medal in front of her home fans in Birmingham this week will be nearly as special as her Olympic title in Paris.

Hodgkinson is the headline act as the European Athletics Champion­ships come to Britain for the first time in its 92-year history, but she insists the intense spotlight on her only increases her determination to win 800m gold.

Continue reading...

Zoo Playground, Edinburgh
Veering from confident to crumbling, Verona Verbakel delivers a vivid show mixing humour with trauma

We are all familiar with the cliche of the influencer narrating their daily routines – or should I say, their journey? – and trying to convince us, and perhaps themselves, they are living their best life. We know, too, about the websites offering intimate access in exchange for cash.

But what if the online medium were put to more honest purposes? What if, instead of endless positivity, it presented a painful recovery from trauma?

Continue reading...

• Arsenal lose 3-2 to Borussia Dortmund in Emirates Cup

• Enzo Maresca impressed by Manchester City’s wide players

The Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta, has backed “warrior” Bruno Guimarães, who to “ignite something different” in the Premier League champions. The Brazil midfielder was introduced to fans ahead of Sunday’s 3-2 defeat by Borussia Dortmund in the Emirates Cup after completing his £75m move from Newcastle.

The 28-year-old, who has signed a four-year deal, bolsters a midfield which already includes Declan Rice, Martin Ødegaard, Mikel Merino, Martin Zubimendi and Eberechi Eze.

Continue reading...

Astronomers say viewing conditions promising for this year’s shower, and 50 to 100 meteors an hour may be visible

The Perseid summer light show is back, and viewing conditions are especially promising across the northern hemisphere.

The meteor shower’s is expected to peak on Wednesday night into Thursday morning, and coincides with a total solar eclipse across Spain, Iceland and Greenland and a six-planet parade – though the best time to view the fireballs will come after totality.

Continue reading...

In rare public break with Trump, Israel’s prime minister says IDF will not withdraw until Hamas is disarmed

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected a US-backed 15-point peace plan for Gaza in a rare public break with Donald Trump.

In a statement on Sunday, Netanyahu said that he was confronting a “wave of rumours about Israeli weakness and Israeli withdrawals on all fronts” and rebuked US pressure to end wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran without Israel’s buy-in.

Continue reading...

British Columbia battling 102 fires day and night across province, as breakneck speed hampers firefighters’ efforts

Canada’s federal government has announced it will provide urgent assistance to British Columbia after an onslaught of unprecedented fast-moving wildfires forced about 22,000 people to flee their homes in frantic evacuations.

A total of 102 wildfires were raging across the province on Sunday, of which nearly half were categorised as “out of control”, according to the BC Wildfire Service. Of those fires, 78 ignited during the past week.

Continue reading...

Tropical cyclone brings torrential rain and high winds to east coast after hitting Japan’s southern Okinawa province

Typhoon Dolphin, the most powerful tropical cyclone to hit China this year, has made landfall on the country’s east coast, bringing torrential rain and strong ⁠winds and triggering warnings ​of flooding and landslides.

The storm has already swept through Japan’s southern Okinawa prefecture, injuring six people and cutting power to more than 50,000 buildings.

Continue reading...

Levels at reservoir along Arizona-Nevada border dipped below previous record set in 2022, amid water crisis in west

Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, has plummeted to its lowest water level since it was filled some 90 years ago, the latest sign of a deepening water crisis in the American west.

Water levels at the reservoir, which straddles the Arizona-Nevada border outside Las Vegas, hit 1,040.4ft (317.1 meters) above sea level on Friday, according to federal data. That’s just below the record set on 28 July 2022, according to the US Bureau of Reclamation.

Continue reading...

Op de bovenste etage van een portiekflat aan de Stadhoudersweg in Rotterdam-Noord heeft zondagavond een hevige brand gewoed. Er kwam in eerste instantie veel zwarte rook vrij bij de brand. Bewoners van het complex werden ontruimd. Inmiddels is de brand onder controle en kijkt de brandweer welke woningen weer vrijgegeven kunnen worden.

Op de bovenste etage van een portiekflat aan de Stadhoudersweg in Rotterdam-Noord heeft zondagavond een hevige brand gewoed. Er kwam in eerste instantie veel zwarte rook vrij bij de brand. Bewoners van het complex werden ontruimd. Inmiddels is de brand onder controle en kijkt de brandweer welke woningen weer vrijgegeven kunnen worden.

Op de bovenste etage van een portiekflat aan de Stadhoudersweg in Rotterdam-Noord is zondagavond brand uitgebroken. Er kwam in eerste instantie veel zwarte rook vrij bij de brand, maar de rook is inmiddels minder hevig. De brandweer is met veel eenheden uitgerukt, mede omdat het gebouw moest worden ontruimd.

Russia's naval facility at Tartous and Hmeimim air base have long been Moscow's principal military footholds in the Mediterranean and Middle East.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

handwritten on back of photograph, "from dad to Gilmer"

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Shell bleef doelbewust een gebrekkige oliepijpleiding gebruiken in de Nigerdelta waardoor grootschalige olievervuiling kon ontstaan, in strijd met de eigen gedragscode. Het is een van de bevindingen in een op Shell-documenten gebaseerd rapport van acht ngo’s. „Shell heeft zijn aandeelhouders misleid.”

Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's – how complex mental maps and spatial reasoning protect your brain "The researchers concluded that the key to reducing the risk of Alzheimer's was not driving itself but continuous real-time navigation: the constant work of locating yourself in space, tracking a destination and updating a mental map as conditions change."

Researchers believe they've found evidence that brain signals reveal the pitches of notes in imagined musical melodies, reports Medical Express:


Study participants were 10 epilepsy patients with electrodes on the surfaces of their brains for clinical monitoring. Participants quietly listened to the first bars of children's tunes, then imagined the melodies of subsequent bars before humming their imagined melodies. Brain activity from the patients carried information about relative pitches within the imagined melodies. Combining note-level pitch predictions over time allowed the research team to recreate melodic changes that reflected the structure of the imagined songs...
"The model we created decodes relative pitch classes — such as do, re, mi, fa, sol, and la — rather than exact, absolute pitches," [said tudy co-lead Jii Kwon of Seoul National University]. "This is useful because people often recognize melodies by the relationships between notes, even when the same melody is played in a different key."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.